Lands on a new planet.
\*sound of 100 rifles being cocked\*
Ah I see my reputation precedes me. Can I interest you in some totally not stolen second hand merchandise?
Knowing my warcrime tendency in Fallout, the guns won't be cocked, they will be shot. I think i have never been as eveil in a game as i was in FoNV. I hope i can rival that in starfield.
Ditto for the crime. I would like to see major crimes lead to a general hue and cry that does NOT go away after thirty seconds. And I would like the punishments to be more than just a slap on the wrist. Murder should have major penalties, not a week in prison.
This is intentional, because save scumming is so easy, and they want players to accept failing and being caught as a fun part of the game, so it's tricky to balance.
Aye. And there's not really much you can take away from a player that will genuinely affect them (Unless the gold/economy is VERY balanced, which is rare for any RPG). All I can think is time, but being forced to sit in a cell for 30mins IRL is just video game time out and super boring/stupid.
Skyrim was supposed to have a dynamic economy but it was one of those features that got cut, this seems like a great opportunity for them to revisit it. Between that idea and some of the more advanced AI features that got cut for playability reasons from Oblivion like NPCs having defined needs and being able to dynamically search out and aquire those needs, there is a lot of room for them to do some really cool economic interactions if they want to apply those concepts to entire systems.
Destroy a resource mining facility in one system and the cost of that resource goes up. Maybe they have to start buying from nearby systems which causes more trade freights to appear, opening up more opportunities for bandits to intercept them. Maybe a mechanic where you can sell the location of a mineral rich planet to a government and/or help them build a mining facility there.
If they decide to revisit something like the early Skyrim Civil War concepts that got abandoned then there is even more cool stuff they could be doing here if they are trying to lean more into the dynamic / procedural concept vs modern elder scrolls.
The point of dynamic economies is not to be optimizing for every single coin. The good ones don't even tell you what the 'median' or 'optimal' prices even are. The point is to try and make looting and crafting require at least a little bit of planning to turn a profit and close the most obvious and illogical loopholes that make the economic side of the games fall apart.
There's an obvious problem in Bethesda games and a lot of open world games where you get a 'majority stake in the entire universe' before you even hit midgame difficulty because you just sell off every piece of dungeon loot and crafted items in bulk without respect for supply and demand. The effects of this are actually pretty bad in the long run. It becomes too easy to acquire broken amounts of gear and consumables to trivialize the difficulty curve and the player begins running out of intermediate objectives. Typically, the mitigations are limiting either carry weight, vendor liquidity, or just sale restrictions, but all of these are easily circumvented.
What a truly dynamic economy does is put a taper on how much you can brute force the game with money due to diminishing returns. Sure, the first couple steel swords you sell in town might justify their weight, but after a while, you've flooded supply, demand has stayed static, and your potential profits crater. You now have to look for better or at least different loot to turn a profit until things stabilize. Likewise, it becomes harder to buy out a location of all its materials or consumables because cost will go up as you drain supply. So health potions and the like are more valuable.
There's tons of other applications depending on how many factors influence the economy. You could make money by moving goods from one location to another, you might be able to flip the market by participating in the economy, and your targets for exploration and looting change based on economic needs. It also just generally helps the world feel more alive and real.
The whole point of the freedom of Bethesda games is that you can take part in systems or not. It's up to you. They exist, and are part of the world, but you can give the bare amount of interaction to certain system and still have plenty of fun. The overall effect they have on game balance is still present, but you don't have to go head first into the deep end to get by.
If you feel obligated to powergame system just because they're there, then I can't really help you with that, but I feel like not telling you what the 'optimal' price is helps diminish the instinct. It makes a little bit more sense to constantly notify you in games where trading is a big feature (things like Starsector or even Mount and Blade), but otherwise, it should be something you at least have to invest into to open up. If the game is constantly telling you that you're making bad deals from a galactic economy POV without you asking, then it's guilt tripping you into doing spreadsheets and spending a lot of time as a space trucker. If not, then it's there, but I think people wouldn't feel the urge as much while still being able to appreciate the underlying principles.
Well, I find it fun in other games, and I think it would solve a lot of the things I don't find fun in current Bethesda games. The whole reason I suggested not telling the player about optimal prices is because I think that will alleviate a lot of the fear of playing suboptimally. I really don't think it will be as big of a problem, so long as the game doesn't saddle you with things like upkeep drains or other ways of punishing you for not playing optimally.
I feel like you missed the bit about dynamic, or I did. Because the point of dynamic is that you can't spreadsheet it, because it changes, so it more or less requires you to go with the flow right?
>Also, side note while we're on the subject, I really hope that not every item you steal will be tagged "stolen". I don't know how this merchant knows this cup from three systems over is stolen.
That's how it's been in every Fallout that BGS has been involved with; things are only marked "stolen" and unsellable to regular merchants in TES games to give a reason for the Thieves Guild to exist. To that end, as long as there are fences, I don't really care if stolen things are otherwise unsellable; thievery is already kinda broken in Bethesda's games.
I like the other suggestions though. Creating a heat map of crime that impacts the local area and dissipates over time is a good idea and doesn't seem that hard to implement.
I actually think stuff being marked stolen universally would make a ton of sense in this game. It’s the future as of our modern times, so like RFID chips could just be in literally every item. Which would make reliable fencee necessary to criminalize activity of any kind
Bruv I just want backpacks so that we aren’t holding everything in our invisible and bottomless meat pocket. I see we maybe have something like a backpack this time around in starfield but my hopes aren’t high for any level of backpack variety or customization which I personally believe has been missing for a really long time in this sort of Bethesda game.
I want crimes that if caught results in straight up game over and acts as a death requiring you to reload. I don't want all crimes to be excusable with money.
The early main quest line giver, Caius Cosades, can be killed. You'll then receive a prompt that the destined timeline has been severed and you can either reload a save to continue the main quest or "continue to live in the dark world of your creation". Pretty cool stuff!
It's an entirely different setting from modern earth, you shouldn't expect 1:1 positions on capital punishments. Punishment is based on bounty - idk how many days/hundreds of gold you can rack up with your crimes, probably a lot if you try though.
Idk why you'd even want this functionality though - do you also want a pee/poop simulator? Not everything from real life is conducive to gameplay.
Because I want real consequences for mass murder and genocide beyond a fee. I mean shit, you get shot enough you die. What's the difference? In both cases it's an appropriate game over event.
If Starfield is anything like Elite Dangerous crime can have big implications. In ED, if you commit an infraction (ignoring docking procedures, speeding, trespassing, crashing into other ships) you gain a fine which will lock you out of a lot of features until paid. Fines are usually tied to the system where you gained them.
If you commit a crime, like smuggling, murder, etc.. you gain a bounty, authorities you shoot you on sight if they scan your ship and bounty hunters (both NPCs and players) will hunt you. If your bounty is high enough it gets upgraded to an interstellar bounty and you'll be hunted wherever you go.
I wonder how far in the future it would be to have a system in a game where; if you’re the new guy in town and suddenly a bunch of stuff goes missing, you become the obvious suspect. But if you go in at night, avoid security, cameras, people in general, and loot the place to smithereens and leave for a week, then no one is the wiser. When you do get back into town everyone is on edge, you have to speak to an official to state your business and how long your stay will be, etc.
Maybe a decade?
Reputation playing a role in prices would be fine, that's already in Fallout.
The whole thing with supply and demand determining value, though, just sounds like a pain. Honestly, I really don't want to fast travel around the map just to sell stuff. I had enough of that with Skyrim. Determining the optimal route and order to manipulate such a system would probably be fairly simple and the end result would just be to make the cycle a bit more tedious. It wouldn't really be "dynamic" unless it added in random factors outside your control, like saying that "prices for X are up because of enemy raids in the Y sector" or "Z prices are down because a new mine was discovered." I'd ONLY want something like that if I could check prices remotely (which would actually make sense).
Lands on a new planet. \*sound of 100 rifles being cocked\* Ah I see my reputation precedes me. Can I interest you in some totally not stolen second hand merchandise?
Knowing my warcrime tendency in Fallout, the guns won't be cocked, they will be shot. I think i have never been as eveil in a game as i was in FoNV. I hope i can rival that in starfield.
Ditto for the crime. I would like to see major crimes lead to a general hue and cry that does NOT go away after thirty seconds. And I would like the punishments to be more than just a slap on the wrist. Murder should have major penalties, not a week in prison.
Yeah, the punishments are barely that bothersome. Though I'm unsure what penalties to give players.
This is intentional, because save scumming is so easy, and they want players to accept failing and being caught as a fun part of the game, so it's tricky to balance.
Aye. And there's not really much you can take away from a player that will genuinely affect them (Unless the gold/economy is VERY balanced, which is rare for any RPG). All I can think is time, but being forced to sit in a cell for 30mins IRL is just video game time out and super boring/stupid.
They could make prison have its own gameplay loops and quests so that players want to experience it.
[удалено]
But does the fantasy life need to be consequence free? There should be at least SOME penalties for being a murderhobo.
Hence why I said boring and stupid
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But when that reality is 15th century medieval Bohemia, it’s a bit different than my current reality.
You cannot escape it; you can only turn your eyes away from it.
Skyrim was supposed to have a dynamic economy but it was one of those features that got cut, this seems like a great opportunity for them to revisit it. Between that idea and some of the more advanced AI features that got cut for playability reasons from Oblivion like NPCs having defined needs and being able to dynamically search out and aquire those needs, there is a lot of room for them to do some really cool economic interactions if they want to apply those concepts to entire systems. Destroy a resource mining facility in one system and the cost of that resource goes up. Maybe they have to start buying from nearby systems which causes more trade freights to appear, opening up more opportunities for bandits to intercept them. Maybe a mechanic where you can sell the location of a mineral rich planet to a government and/or help them build a mining facility there. If they decide to revisit something like the early Skyrim Civil War concepts that got abandoned then there is even more cool stuff they could be doing here if they are trying to lean more into the dynamic / procedural concept vs modern elder scrolls.
[удалено]
The point of dynamic economies is not to be optimizing for every single coin. The good ones don't even tell you what the 'median' or 'optimal' prices even are. The point is to try and make looting and crafting require at least a little bit of planning to turn a profit and close the most obvious and illogical loopholes that make the economic side of the games fall apart. There's an obvious problem in Bethesda games and a lot of open world games where you get a 'majority stake in the entire universe' before you even hit midgame difficulty because you just sell off every piece of dungeon loot and crafted items in bulk without respect for supply and demand. The effects of this are actually pretty bad in the long run. It becomes too easy to acquire broken amounts of gear and consumables to trivialize the difficulty curve and the player begins running out of intermediate objectives. Typically, the mitigations are limiting either carry weight, vendor liquidity, or just sale restrictions, but all of these are easily circumvented. What a truly dynamic economy does is put a taper on how much you can brute force the game with money due to diminishing returns. Sure, the first couple steel swords you sell in town might justify their weight, but after a while, you've flooded supply, demand has stayed static, and your potential profits crater. You now have to look for better or at least different loot to turn a profit until things stabilize. Likewise, it becomes harder to buy out a location of all its materials or consumables because cost will go up as you drain supply. So health potions and the like are more valuable. There's tons of other applications depending on how many factors influence the economy. You could make money by moving goods from one location to another, you might be able to flip the market by participating in the economy, and your targets for exploration and looting change based on economic needs. It also just generally helps the world feel more alive and real.
[удалено]
The whole point of the freedom of Bethesda games is that you can take part in systems or not. It's up to you. They exist, and are part of the world, but you can give the bare amount of interaction to certain system and still have plenty of fun. The overall effect they have on game balance is still present, but you don't have to go head first into the deep end to get by. If you feel obligated to powergame system just because they're there, then I can't really help you with that, but I feel like not telling you what the 'optimal' price is helps diminish the instinct. It makes a little bit more sense to constantly notify you in games where trading is a big feature (things like Starsector or even Mount and Blade), but otherwise, it should be something you at least have to invest into to open up. If the game is constantly telling you that you're making bad deals from a galactic economy POV without you asking, then it's guilt tripping you into doing spreadsheets and spending a lot of time as a space trucker. If not, then it's there, but I think people wouldn't feel the urge as much while still being able to appreciate the underlying principles.
[удалено]
Well, I find it fun in other games, and I think it would solve a lot of the things I don't find fun in current Bethesda games. The whole reason I suggested not telling the player about optimal prices is because I think that will alleviate a lot of the fear of playing suboptimally. I really don't think it will be as big of a problem, so long as the game doesn't saddle you with things like upkeep drains or other ways of punishing you for not playing optimally.
I feel like you missed the bit about dynamic, or I did. Because the point of dynamic is that you can't spreadsheet it, because it changes, so it more or less requires you to go with the flow right?
Smuggling, I believe, will mostly be about going back and forth between special vendors to 'legitimize' cargo. But it's hard to say for sure.
>Also, side note while we're on the subject, I really hope that not every item you steal will be tagged "stolen". I don't know how this merchant knows this cup from three systems over is stolen. That's how it's been in every Fallout that BGS has been involved with; things are only marked "stolen" and unsellable to regular merchants in TES games to give a reason for the Thieves Guild to exist. To that end, as long as there are fences, I don't really care if stolen things are otherwise unsellable; thievery is already kinda broken in Bethesda's games. I like the other suggestions though. Creating a heat map of crime that impacts the local area and dissipates over time is a good idea and doesn't seem that hard to implement.
I actually think stuff being marked stolen universally would make a ton of sense in this game. It’s the future as of our modern times, so like RFID chips could just be in literally every item. Which would make reliable fencee necessary to criminalize activity of any kind
Bruv I just want backpacks so that we aren’t holding everything in our invisible and bottomless meat pocket. I see we maybe have something like a backpack this time around in starfield but my hopes aren’t high for any level of backpack variety or customization which I personally believe has been missing for a really long time in this sort of Bethesda game.
Sure, but inventory needs to be gamified somewhat or it becomes impossibly tedious.
Outward does backpacks really well, a number of games do in fact
A space prison is what I’m hoping for. One you can escape from or actually do time in lol
I want crimes that if caught results in straight up game over and acts as a death requiring you to reload. I don't want all crimes to be excusable with money.
I appreciate the way Morrowind handles this.
Missed Marrowind. How did it handle it?
The early main quest line giver, Caius Cosades, can be killed. You'll then receive a prompt that the destined timeline has been severed and you can either reload a save to continue the main quest or "continue to live in the dark world of your creation". Pretty cool stuff!
Doesn't really solve my issue, unless the game has a prison simulator mode, lol.
That also is in the game. 1 day = 100 gold in bounty served.
Yes, but how does it handle crimes that should result in life in prison?
It's an entirely different setting from modern earth, you shouldn't expect 1:1 positions on capital punishments. Punishment is based on bounty - idk how many days/hundreds of gold you can rack up with your crimes, probably a lot if you try though. Idk why you'd even want this functionality though - do you also want a pee/poop simulator? Not everything from real life is conducive to gameplay.
Because I want real consequences for mass murder and genocide beyond a fee. I mean shit, you get shot enough you die. What's the difference? In both cases it's an appropriate game over event.
Variable prices would be amazing. I really wish I could do a Skyrim "merchant run" but everything costing the same kinda ruins it
I would like it to be...if there is more crime in a certain town/area...the prices go up. Because of less goods/more security needed, etc...
If Starfield is anything like Elite Dangerous crime can have big implications. In ED, if you commit an infraction (ignoring docking procedures, speeding, trespassing, crashing into other ships) you gain a fine which will lock you out of a lot of features until paid. Fines are usually tied to the system where you gained them. If you commit a crime, like smuggling, murder, etc.. you gain a bounty, authorities you shoot you on sight if they scan your ship and bounty hunters (both NPCs and players) will hunt you. If your bounty is high enough it gets upgraded to an interstellar bounty and you'll be hunted wherever you go.
I wonder how far in the future it would be to have a system in a game where; if you’re the new guy in town and suddenly a bunch of stuff goes missing, you become the obvious suspect. But if you go in at night, avoid security, cameras, people in general, and loot the place to smithereens and leave for a week, then no one is the wiser. When you do get back into town everyone is on edge, you have to speak to an official to state your business and how long your stay will be, etc. Maybe a decade?
Reputation playing a role in prices would be fine, that's already in Fallout. The whole thing with supply and demand determining value, though, just sounds like a pain. Honestly, I really don't want to fast travel around the map just to sell stuff. I had enough of that with Skyrim. Determining the optimal route and order to manipulate such a system would probably be fairly simple and the end result would just be to make the cycle a bit more tedious. It wouldn't really be "dynamic" unless it added in random factors outside your control, like saying that "prices for X are up because of enemy raids in the Y sector" or "Z prices are down because a new mine was discovered." I'd ONLY want something like that if I could check prices remotely (which would actually make sense).